Chapter 1
I dropped to my knees in front of Mother, clutched her trouser leg, and sobbed.
“Mother, please don’t make me leave.”
“I don’t eat much, and I can work. Washing, cooking, fieldwork, feeding the pigs—I can do all of it.”
“I don’t need a room. Just let me put some bedding out in the yard.”
“Let me come home. Otherwise, he really will beat me to death.”
I rolled up my sleeves to show her.
My arms were covered in bruises, old and new. The slightest touch sent pain through me until I shook.
“My poor girl.”
Mother’s tears fell at once, but she still pried my fingers loose, one by one.
“Xiaochun, it isn’t that I don’t love you.”
“But you’re a married daughter. If you keep running home, people will laugh at our family. What will your sister-in-law think? How will your brother hold his head up?”
“And your two nephews will need wives someday. If their aunt has been sent home by her husband’s family, what girl will marry into ours?”
I stared at her.
“What people think matters more than whether I get beaten to death?”
Mother’s face stiffened.
“It’s nowhere near as bad as you say.”
“Zhuzi just has a temper. Men don’t know their own strength after a few drinks. It happens.”
“Bear it, and it’ll pass.”
A chill ran through me.
How was I supposed to bear it?
She’d told me to bear it when he slapped me, and when he kicked me in the stomach. That morning he’d smashed a stool over my head, leaving me bleeding, my vision going black.
If I kept bearing it, sooner or later he’d kill me.
I bit down hard on my lip.
“Then give me some money for the fare.”
Mother stared. “What fare?”
As if I’d found my last chance to survive, I said hurriedly, “I heard there’s a place near Shanghai called Taicang.”
“There are lots of factories hiring women. I could support myself without a man.”
“I’m not asking you to give me the money. I’ll borrow it.”
“When I earn some, I’ll pay you back ten times—no, a hundred times as much.”
Mother went white with fear. “Absolutely not!”
“What would a woman like you go all that way for?”
“Those big places are dangerous! What if someone traffics you? What if you get cheated?”
“Besides, what can you do?”
“Apart from working the fields, cooking, and serving people, what can you do?”
“Those job offers are all lies! Why would they want you?”
I opened my mouth.
“But didn’t Jianguo go there and make his fortune?”
Chen Jianguo was a legend in our village.
Once, everyone had called him a layabout who wouldn’t do honest work or settle down to farming.
Then he’d gone south to find work.
A few years later, he returned in a leather jacket, riding a motorcycle, with a thick stack of ten-yuan notes in his pocket.
His family built the grandest brick-and-tile house in the village.
He married the prettiest girl in the village, too.
After that, nobody called him a layabout. They all said he’d made something of himself.
Even his parents walked with their backs straighter.
I didn’t need to make a fortune like Chen Jianguo.
I only wanted to live.
But at his name, Mother’s face darkened further.
“Have you been talking about Chen Jianguo in front of Zhuzi?”
I stared. “What?”
Her voice rose at once, as though she’d caught me doing something wrong.
“No wonder Zhuzi hits you!”
“There’s nothing a man hates more than a woman who won’t settle down.”
“You’re married, and all day you’re thinking about other men. What man could stand that?”
I looked at her in disbelief.
“Mother, what are you saying? I just want to find a job.”
“You can’t do that either!”
She jabbed my forehead hard.
“Once you’re married, you should settle down and get on with your life.”
“When your father was young, didn’t he drink and gamble? Didn’t he hit me?”
“Haven’t I lived my whole life that way?”
Suddenly, I couldn’t speak.
Of course I remembered.
My father was a hopeless gambler.
When he won, he drank.
When he lost, he hit people.
Once, when I was little, he pinned Mother down in the yard and beat her.
My brother hid inside, snoring loudly and pretending he hadn’t heard a thing.
Only I ran over, threw my arms around Father’s legs, and begged him to stop.
He kicked me away.
My forehead struck the threshold. Blood ran down half my face.
That night, Mother put medicine on the wound.
She held me and cried all night.
“My poor daughter,” she said.
“Marriage is like being born a second time.”
“I’ll find you a good family to marry into.”
But in the end, she’d married me off to Fan Erzhu, who offered the highest bride price of any man in the surrounding villages.
That same layabout who’d lived off his elder brother and couldn’t even find himself a wife.
After his brother died, he pocketed the compensation money and strutted around like a rich man.
The six thousand yuan in bride money built my brother a new house, bought his wife a set of three gold pieces, and bought my two nephews remote-control cars.
Had Mother forgotten those days?
She was still talking.
“Go back and make a good life with him. Once you have a son, the hard part will be over.”
I looked up at her.
“But you had my brother, and your life didn’t get any better.”
The room went silent.
Mother’s tears hadn’t dried.
But the way she looked at me changed.
As if I’d said something unforgivable.
She raised her hand and slapped me.
Smack.
My face snapped to one side.
Mother trembled with anger.
“You rotten girl!”
“You can’t manage your own life, and you dare talk about your brother?”
“No wonder Zhuzi hits you!”
“Who could put up with that mouth of yours?”
I held my cheek. My ears rang.
Mother kept shouting.
“It takes two to make a fight.”
“Why doesn’t he hit anyone else? Why only you?”
“Have you been fooling around? Did he catch you doing something?”
“Otherwise, why would he hit you for no reason?”
“You’re married now. Stop thinking you can come back here and be a burden to us!”
My heart went cold.
A burden.
That was what I was to her.
Her daughter was married off. The bride money had been collected.
Goods sold. No returns, no exchanges.
I held my burning cheek and suddenly didn’t want to cry anymore.
That slap had knocked away more than my tears. It had destroyed the last of my foolish hopes.
No one in this world would save me.
No one but myself.